An array of necked vessels (bottles, flasks, jugs, etc) suspended from a frame, and fitted with airfoils that influence the incident angle of airflow at the mouth of the vessel. When the velocity of the wind changes, the composition creates a wind organ.
Stewart Port has made things, both musical and mute, for 35 years. He began making instruments out of tin cans and other found objects for comic relief from his usual work of building and restoring fine guitars; and became intrigued by the physics and mechanical principles of musical instruments, and the rudiments of hand tool use, which can be taught to kids, teachers, artists and aspiring instrument makers. He has taught workshops at The Crucible, The Institute for Urban Homesteading, and various local schools, camps and libraries.
Stewart builds and repairs guitars in his Oakland studio, and plays baritone horn with the Brass Liberation Orchestra. He personally consumes, or attempts to consume, the contents of every vessel used in the construction of the instruments.
The Rain Chime is made by 26 pairs of hands to create sounds of rain. Each day, the students created a different layer of the Rain Chime and learned various methods of making and creating sounds with found-materials. Together, the students brought rain to reality by creating a rain-scape. This sculpture will live at the newly-established maker space at La Escuelita Elementary and will be broken down into personal "Rain Sticks" for the students to take home.
The Musical Chandelier is an interactive installation with a pre-designed frame, on which people,visitors and children can attach or hang various pieces. Based on the kind of objects attached, the wind will play/create sounds.
Taylor Gersbach is a working artist and musician in Oakland, California. Originating from the Heart of Texas, she is a graduate from California College of the Arts with an Individualized Degree (BFA 2015). As an educator, Taylor has held a position as a children’s art summer camp teacher (ages 4-12) with Brushstrokes Ceramic Studio in Berkeley, California throughout Summer of 2014. Taylor was a commissioned guest artist for a 3rd grade class at La Escuelita in 2015 teaching nine year olds the methods of making.
Taylor has established herself within local Bay-Area endeavors. A few of these include: art directing the monthly arts and music event, Mixed Media Mixer, of Berkeley, CA; working with Thingamajigs as Alternate Communications Coordinator and Children's Art Educator, performing and building instruments as a soundscape-percussionist with a psychedelic orchestral-rock band Frontiers. She is also producing her own music project under Tay and the JanglaDahs.
The sculpture is in the making right now. Meet the artists and find out more at the venue.
Robert Lopez Robert Lopez is a percussionist, composer, curator and educator based out of Oakland, California. His diverse background in various types of musics such as that of folkloric traditions of Brazil, Ghana and Cuba, alongside contemporary chamber music and free improvisation, have allowed him to maintain a maleable approach to sharing musical ideas. His degree work includes a Bachelors of Music from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at Cal State University Long Beach and a Master of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Improvisation from Mills College. Currently, he spends his time making music with groups ZE BIB!, the Oakland Active Orchestra, Opera Wolf and Grex among others. He is also on staff as a dance accompanist at Mills College and UC Berkeley. On the education front, he teaches private lessons out of his studio in Oakland and also teaches group lessons with the organization Jeena, specializing in creating a community for children with developmental disabilites.
An ensemble of several springs loaded with suspended steel balls that respond to subtle changes in the wind. The balls move, collide and create vibrations. When piezoelectric "bender" microphones connected to the top of these springs sense these impulses, unexpected dynamic sounds result.
Cere Davis is a cross-displinary artist, engineer, dancer and community organizer based in Berkeley, California. Her background includes work and studies in computer systems architecture, physics and vocal improvisation. Her work freely crosses boundaries between engineering, soulful expression, and laboratory experimentation. Her current work focuses on the use of passive transduction to explore the subtle behavior between materials, often altering the conventional scale of sounds produced from small movements. Through this we hear the voice of tiny acoustic events at pin-drop scale. Her works surprise the perceiver with new relationships between sound and size.
She has performed and lectured at venues based on in Oakland, California and will display her Acousto-Kinetic sculpture work at the 2015 MakerFaire.
Children from Bridges Academy collaborated with David to create Sinking Pegs, one of the five installations that include a bottle organ from empty alcohol bottles in the shape of a walk-able labyrinth and a tall pole with a ribbon puncturing a guitar
David Samas David Samas is a composer, cosmologist, poet, painter, performer, philosopher, farmer and father of four. He is a practitioner and professor of arcane healing technologies and traditional magics- a field which includes massage, herbalism, hypnotherapy, psychoacoustics and shamanism. He has a BFA from the SF Art Institute in conceptual art and studied poetics at the New College of California, Vassar, Bennington and S.F. State. As a young man he performed with the SF Boys Chorus, the SF Opera and the SF Symphony with which he won a GRAMMY for the “best classical recording” of 1994. He also makes sacred geometry amulets and talismans, is an excellent cook, and self publishes small editions of hand bound art books.
Lately, he focuses on inventing instruments and extended vocal techniques. He is the creator of the Superb Metaliphone, the Gamelan Piano, the Crystalithaphone, Glassilalia and a number of musical paintings which serve as sets, orchestras and characters for his inventive operas and shadow plays. He uses Tuvan overtone singing and Tibetan deep chanting along with a host of birdsongs, whale songs, howling and polyphonic split tones to weave a dense tapestry of unusual sounds.
Nathan Moody is a multi-disciplinary designer and artist. Originally trained as an illustrator, he is a musician, field recordist, and sound designer, in addition to being a designer of interactive installations. He operates an audio blog , was a co-founder of the cross-disciplinary sound blog sonic-terrain.com, and is a co-founder and the design director of the award-winning digital installation studio Stimulant (stimulant.com) in San Francisco.
John Carnahan is a writer, performer, and videomaker. He has created videos with Christine Germain and Company, Kinetic Arts, the Art in Nature Festival, and the Carpetbag Brigade, among others. He teaches cinema history and theory at California State University, East Bay.
A pipe resonator is employed with ten dual pitched string pairs and five single pitched 'root' strings arrayed in a radial fashion around the pipe at 24 degree intervals. The root strings are distributed at 72 degree intervals relative to each other, so that regardless of wind direction, there is a constant base harmonic set sounding as a drone reference. The ten dual pitched string pairs are implemented using a koto-like bridge system to create different pairs of string lengths along each direction. This creates different harmonic contrasts for changing wind direction, or if the harp is spun.
The tuning of the ten dual pitched string pairs will fill out a set of tones inspired by the work of Harry Partch. There are 20 tones in all; ten overtones and ten undertones filling out the so called seven-limit. The base frequencies of these strings are expressed as whole number ratios relative to the base frequency of the five drone strings. Several elements are combined to create a novel, compact, and a sonically rich design.
David Ilstrup & Adam Sheppard are part of a team of fabrication hobbyists who build large art for fun. David is currently working as a computer vision researcher. He has an undergraduate degree in music and previously worked as a digital audio programmer for KORG. Adam is working as a product manager. He previously managed audio products for AVID.
Danny and the kids are busy building it. Find these chimes in the venue and you can talk to the artist to know more.
Danny Clay is a composer / sound artist / teaching artist / general noise-maker from Ohio, currently based in San Francisco. His work draws upon elements of unusual musical traditions, found objects, archival media, toy instruments, digital errata, local history, graphic notation, children's theater, and the everything-in-between.
A 5' x 5' x 5' steel triangular frame is secured to the ground and various lines made of different materials extend off of the frame and into/onto the ground 6' to 10'. The lines have various sound-making items attached to them animated by the ambient wind. The sound can be experienced by lying in and around the sculpture.
Sarah Chung is an experimental, inter-media artist and educator, residing in Oakland, CA. She creates Pillow Garden layers and loops a variety of field recordings and sounds harvested from curious instruments and objects.
Staci Southwick lives in Oakland California and has a Design Build business that is both creative and functional. Her passion is the blending of design and art. She has a degree in both sculpture and graphic design.
A rotating drum powered by a wind turbine will carry magnetic rods, which will strike musical jet engine blades hanging above the drum. The rods can be adjusted to change the composition and percussive sequencing of the instrument, providing audience interaction and spontaneous musical creation.
Kunal Dovedy builds musical and interactive art, bringing elements from a wide range of cultures together to create moments of inspiration. He grew up in Southern California, playing bass in live bands, building instruments and contraptions in his garage, and having fun the whole time. He has exhibited his work at Burning Man, and currently has an interactive instrument on display at the Oakland Aviation Museum. He is currently working as a project manager in San Francisco, building great things for the internet.
The sculpture is in the making right now. Meet the artists and find out more at the venue.
Edward Schocker is a composer and performer who creates music with made/found materials and alternate tuning systems. He studied composition at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and independently with Lou Harrison.
Edward composed music for an UNESCO sponsored work with Echo Arts –a large bicommunal project in Cyprus that helped build understanding between communities in conflict. Recent commissions include Berkley Art Museum, Stanford Lively Arts, Theatre of Yugen, St. Ignatius Choir, Firebird Chinese Orchestra, and Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo. He was awarded The NEA/Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Fellowship, and a residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts and the Berkeley Museum/Pacific Film Archive.
Sudhu Tewari has been called a professional bricoleur, junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer. An early interest in disassembling alarm clocks and coffee makers gave rise to electro-acoustic instruments constructed with the remains of discarded stereo equipment, kinetic sculptures and sound installations. Sudhu builds audio electronics, acoustic instruments, kinetic sculptures, interactive installations, and sound sculptures. He received his MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2002 and is currently a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz in the Cultural Musicology program, writing his dissertation on the experimental musical instruments of Tom Nunn, a local instrument builder.
Sudhu manages a bicycle program at the Crucible in West Oakland, working primarily with youth from West Oakland, teaching them to repair bicycles and training them for future employment as bike mechanics. He also teaches a bike frame modification class, in which students cut up, weld and modify old bikes to create unique “art bikes”. Sudhu also teaches youth kinetics and electronics classes at the Crucible and Camp 510 in Oakland. He’s about to embark on a second week long class at Camp 510, building a miniature golf course with groups of students over the course of a week. In addition to teaching younger students, Sudhu currently teaches three Audio Electronics classes at the Art Institute of California San Francisco and has taught classes in Electronics and Sound Art at UC Santa Cruz.
Toes is a set of chiming creatures that sway in the wind.
Tom Nunn has designed, built and performed with original musical instruments since 1976, having received a B.Mus. and M.A. in music composition from the University of Texas at Austin and S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, and post-graduate work at U.C. San Diego. His instruments typically utilize commonly available materials, are sculptural in appearance, utilize contact microphones for amplification, and are designed specifically for improvisation with elements of ambiguity, unpredictability and nonlinearity. Tom has designed and built over 200 instruments, representing three basic types: space plates, electro-acoustic percussion boards, and skatchboxes. Space plates are metal sheets with bronze rods that are bowed; the plate is supported by inflated balloons, allowing the plate to resonate. Electroacoustic percussion boards are plywood sheets with various hardware devices attached such as nails, threaded steel rods, bronze rods, combs, etc., played with a variety of small percussion implements. Skatchboxes are cardboard boxes with objects such as washers, combs, toothpicks, bronze rod, dowel, etc. taped or glued to the exterior that are played with various modified combs.
All of Tom’s instruments are amplified using contact microphones and have sculptural qualities.
